Like Donald Trump, Ms. Warren might want to let an editor see her tweets before she sends them. Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute quickly responded to Ms. Warren by tweeting, “If only the CFPB had any meaningful accountability to Congress . . .”

Someone get the smelling salts because Ms. Warren is down for the count.

As Mr. Murray and readers of these columns know, Ms. Warren designed the CFPB as an independent agency like no other precisely so it could ignore Congress. The bureau is funded not with an annual appropriation like the rest of the government, but by the Federal Reserve based on a request from the head of the CFPB. Congress thus can’t use its constitutional power of the purse to enforce public accountability.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds quotes a recent interview with Marc Scribner in his USA Today column on airline competition and regulation:

When you deal with competitive industries, you generally encounter falling prices and a pronounced eagerness to make the customer happy. When you deal with industries that are protected from competition, you generally encounter high prices and a pronounced arrogance toward customers.

As Marc Scribner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, quoted by Welch, puts it: “If American consumers wish to enjoy improved service quality in air travel, they should demand that Congress repeal 90 years of anti-competitive federal law. Less regulation of air travel, not more, is the solution.”

Today the Competitive Enterprise Institute filed its closing brief in its challenge to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) 21-month delay on its petition concerning the Charter/Brighthouse/Time Warner cable merger. CEI’s June 2016 petition requested the agency to reconsider the conditions it imposed when it approved that merger. One of the dissenters from those conditions was Commissioner Ajit Pai, who is now FCC Chairman.

While the FCC has a statutory duty to respond to such petitions within 90 days, it has not acted on CEI’s petition for 21 months. CEI is requesting the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to grant CEI’s petition for mandamus and order the FCC to respond to the petition.

“It's clear that the FCC’s conditions harm consumers and are an unauthorized attempt to micromanage the internet at the public’s expense,” said Ryan Radia. “In opposing our request for mandamus, the FCC has taken a position that would turn its statutory duty to act quickly into mere congressional suggestion.”

Along with its brief, CEI filed a declaration from Robert W. Crandall, an expert on telecomm regulatory policy, confirming the harm to consumers from the merger conditions and supporting CEI’s standing.

CEI argued in its 2016 petition that the FCC has no authority to place merger conditions on Charter that increase costs for consumers, who will have to foot the bill for an overreaching federal agency.

In October of 2015 CEI filed comments saying the FCC should grant the merger, but without conditions. In May 2016, the FCC approved the merger but with the unlawful conditions. In June 2016, CEI filed its petition and to date has heard no response from the agency. In December 2017, CEI filed a petition requesting a writ of mandamus compelling the FCC to respond to CEI’s 2016 petition. Today CEI filed its reply brief in that lawsuit.

On news that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals late Thursday struck down the Obama Labor Department's controversial fiduciary rule, Competitive Enterprise Institute financial policy expert John Berlau praised the consumer and investor implications of this decision and urged the Trump administration to respect the decision:

The ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the Obama administration’s fiduciary rule is a victory for the rule of law and for millions of middle-class American savers and investors. The court rightly labeled as “arbitrary and capricious” the Labor Department’s issuing of this regulation that goes against Congressional intent and redefines “fiduciary” in a way that gives the department broad power over a broad swath of investment professionals servicing 401 (k)s and individual retirement accounts. The rule was also based on the false premise that most holders of 401(k)s and IRAs lacked the ability, in the Obama Labor Department’s words in the proposed regulation, to “prudently manage retirement assets on their own” and “distinguish … good investment results from bad.”

As the Court noted, many companies have already pulled out of this market or reduced their services to middle-class investors as a result of this rule. The Trump Labor Department should respect this ruling and stay out of an area that Congress never intended it to venture into. Any new fiduciary standard should be issued, as Congress intended, by the Securities and Exchange Commission and should preserve and enhance investor choice and access to financial advice.

We the undersigned free market organizations, representing millions of hardworking Americans, urge you to cosponsor S.177/H.R.5281, the “Global Trade Accountability Act,” introduced by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and just introduced in the House by Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH). If enacted, the legislation would strengthen Congressional oversight and accountability of trade-related decisions made by the Executive Branch.

Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution gives Congress the authority to impose tariffs and regulate foreign commerce. Article II of the Constitution gives the President the power to negotiate international trade agreements. Over time, Congress has ceded much of its authority to establish and raise tariffs and restrict imports to the Executive Branch as long as certain conditions are met. This current arrangement gives the Executive Branch virtual carte blanche to raise tariffs or otherwise restrict imports in a manner that could trigger a costly and unnecessary trade war.

Consistent with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, and similar in process to the REINS Act, the Global Trade Accountability Act would require Congressional approval of proposed Executive Branch trade measures aimed at raising tariffs or restricting imports. In short, it would allow Congress to assert its Constitutional authority over trade policy when appropriate.

Trade policy has been unfairly maligned in recent years, but make no mistake: protectionism has an ugly history in the United States. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 deepened and prolonged the Great Depression. Since World War II, however, a bipartisan consensus emerged and the United States began working to liberalize foreign trade between nations. This has paid enormous dividends both domestically and abroad. Regrettably, U.S. economic growth is now threatened by new tariffs on steel and aluminum used by U.S. manufacturers, along with repeated threats to terminate reciprocal zero-tariff trade agreements that benefit the United States.

The Global Trade Accountability Act can prevent the United States from slouching toward protectionism. That is why we strongly urge you to cosponsor the Global Trade Accountability Act.

The rapid growth of online retailing has prompted state and local government officials to seek greater authority to capture more sales tax revenue, and from brick-and-mortar retailers to allow states to “level the playing field” by collecting sales tax from retailers in other states who sell to their residents. A leading congressional proposal to grant them this power would harm consumers, hurt small online businesses, and hinder the free flow of interstate commerce. While it would not technically impose a new tax, consumers will experience the legislation as a net tax hike.

A 1992 Supreme Court decision, Quill v. North Dakota, mandates that a seller must have a physical presence, or “nexus,” in the buyer’s state to be subject to the latter state’s sales tax. Far from a tax loophole, this is the principle of “no taxation without representation” in action. The seller, not the buyer, calculates and remits sales tax. While this arrangement can lead to different sales tax treatment among different retailers, it benefits consumers by preserving healthy tax competition among states.

Policy Recommendation. Attempts to empower states to tax outside their borders are unpopular with voters and undermine both fiscal conservative principles and state sovereignty under America’s federal system.

By contrast, an origin-based sales tax system provides a more equitable and efficient approach to Internet sales that preserves healthy tax competition among states. It would address the inequities of the current regime without the negative consequences from allowing states to tax non-residents.

Under an origin-based system, tax is assessed at the point of purchase, as in a brick-and-mortar store. For example, if a Virginia resident buys socks online from a California seller, that purchase is taxed according to California’s tax rate and remitted to the Golden state. It is no different than if that Virginian flew to California to buy socks in person.

Leading Proposals

The Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA, H.R.2193 ), sponsored by Rep. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), gives states unprecedented new powers to reach outside their borders to tax online sales. It creates an option for sellers to use tax compliance software known as Certified Solution Providers (CSPs), but does not compensate sellers for the costs of implementing and testing it. The bill gives lip service to protecting small sellers from cross-border audits, even though all states are already allowed to audit small sellers—those with under $5 million in sales—if the state has a “reasonable suspicion” of misrepresentation. It also contains a small seller exemption that provides some relief from compliance costs, but phases out completely in only four years—by which time all online businesses will be forced to act as tax-collection agents for every state with a sales tax.

Another proposal is a hybrid origin sourcing option, which was suggested by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) in the 114th Congress. This would require sales to be taxed in accordance with the tax base of the seller’s state—what is and is not subject to taxation—at the buyer’s state’s tax rate for remote purchases. In practice, this means an Etsy seller in California who sells a pair of socks to a buyer in Virginia would have to determine a) if the socks are taxable under California’s tax law and b) Virginia’s tax rate for that item. The sock seller would then remit the tax to California authorities, who would forward those funds to a multistate clearinghouse. The clearinghouse would then calculate an amount to send back to Virginia using a given formula.

The issue has reached the courts. While Congress debated the issue, many states sought to expand the definition of nexus in order to trigger sales tax collection. These attempts, most notably by California, New York, and Colorado, worked their way through the courts with varying results. This culminated in the South Dakota legislature passing an intentionally unconstitutional remote state sales tax bill that helped launch a challenge to Quill that has now reached the United States Supreme Court, South Dakota v. Wayfair. Oral arguments in this case are set for April. A ruling is expected before summer of 2018.

State of Play

Polls show that efforts to expand sales taxes on the Internet remain unpopular. A March 2018 National Taxpayers Union poll found strong majorities across party lines opposed new Internet sales taxes, with 65 percent of likely 2018 voters opposed to expanding online sales taxes. This is consistent with the opposition measured in other polls on the subject.

Proponents of empowering states to tax out-of-state sellers include state and local governments and the associations that represent them. Expanded sales tax collection would provide a windfall to their coffers and allow them to kick politically unpopular budget cuts down the road. Other supporters include big box retailers, whose brick-and-mortar stores pay sales taxes in every state. Their calls for “fairness” notwithstanding, large retailers stand to gain a competitive advantage from the disproportionate compliance cost burdens RTPA imposes on smaller retailers. Amazon is also advocating for online sales tax legislation. The online retailer now operates warehouses across the country to facilitate fast delivery—a physical presence that has made them subject to sales taxes in several states.

Opponents of RTPA-style legislation include officials of states with no sales tax, who object to subjecting retailers to calculating, collecting, and remitting sales tax to other states. They view this as a states’ rights issue. The Direct Marketing Association and eBay have been vocal in opposition, worried that compliance costs would prove detrimental to their members—and even force some to cease operations. Taxpayer watchdog groups, free-market think tanks, and fiscally conservative columnists have objected on principle.

Taking comment on the petitions would be much easier. A group of homeowners filed one petition the day of Trump's inauguration. Another petition was filed last February by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and board members of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (Greenwire, April 10, 2017).

To open a public debate, the agency could simply issue a notice asking for public comment on the petition. The move wouldn't create any obligation for EPA to take regulatory action, and it could score the administration some political points on the right.

"We would be happy if the EPA took our petition and the other petitions for reopening or reconsidering the endangerment finding and if they decided to consider those petitions in a public way," said Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Ebell led Trump's EPA transition team.

"Essentially, a red team could be a part of that process, a red team analysis of current climate science could be part of that process, and that would then allow them to make a better-informed decision about whether reopening the endangerment finding is a good idea or not," Ebell added.

"I am concerned that much of our climate policy remains on autopilot," complained Trump’s former energy adviser Myron Ebell, now a research director at the right-leaning Competitive Enterprise Institute, who said it reflects a failure by the administration to fill key positions and replace staffers who oppose the president's agenda.

Human Achievement Hour is the Competitive Enterprises Institute’s annual celebration of innovation and progress. During this hour, people around the world pay tribute to human ingenuity and advancements in every field from healthcare and energy to communications and transportation.

These achievements by entrepreneurs and innovators allow us to live richer and fuller lives. They also help us solve problems and protect ourselves and our families in unpredictable situations, like emergencies and disasters.

Relaxing at home with plenty of food, heat, and hot water for your family?

However you spend the hour, please remember that human ingenuity, affordable energy, and the freedom to create and innovate are making life better for billions of people around the world every day—from life expectancy and disease treatment to literacy rates and increased employment. Throwing up barriers and restrictions that slow down these improvements have real costs, especially for the poor and most vulnerable among us.

Celebrate Human Achievement Hour by sharing your favorite human achievement on Facebook and Twitter! What innovations make your life safer, healthier, and happier?

Originally launched as an alternative to “Earth Hour,” an activist campaign that calls on people to show their concern about climate change by turning off their lights for an hour, Human Achievement Hour challenges people to celebrate human ingenuity and our ability to solve problems creatively.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) commends the U.S. Senate on passage of Sen. Crapo's S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act. This legislation will bring some relief to thousands of community banks and a number of regional banks across the country. While the bill does not go far enough to fix the mess that the Dodd-Frank Act created, CEI experts argue it is a step in the right direction.

"Republicans and Democrats deserve credit for working together on commonsense banking reform. Dodd-Frank made thousands of banks across the country ‘Too Small to Succeed,’ with more than one in five banks disappearing since its enactment. Reforms in this bill are a step in the right direction to help right-size regulatory costs imposed by Dodd-Frank."

"This bill takes some very modest steps toward reducing the regulatory burden on small banks and credit unions. It needs to provide more relief to Main Street entrepreneurs and investors by adding bipartisan deregulatory measures from the House that will lift barriers to access to capital. The House and Senate should go to conference to make this a better bill."

President Trump is expected to name Larry Kudlow as director of the National Economic Council this week. Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) senior fellow John Berlau commends Trump for selecting an adviser with deep knowledge of trade, tax, and regulatory policy issues.

“Kudos to President Donald Trump for making an excellent choice in appointing Larry Kudlow as chairman of the National Economic Council. Kudlow understands business on both Main Street and Wall Street, and grasps the harsh impact of both excessive taxation and overregulation on America’s investors, consumers, and entrepreneurs. He has not been afraid to call out politicians of both parties for enacting flawed policies such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, signed by President George W. Bush, that quadrupled accounting costs for many companies.

“Kudlow has also been a fierce critic of protectionism and supporter of free trade, a position that contrasts with recent actions of the Trump administration. May President Trump and members of Congress heed Kudlow’s knowledge and wisdom on trade, taxes and regulation.”

Today, Facebook announced it removed the pages of hate group Britain First and its leaders for violating Facebook’s community standards. Vice President for Strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Iain Murray, argues that Facebook is within its rights as a private company to hold the group accountable.

A British citizen and former U.K. civil servant, Iain Murray gave the following statement about the news:

“Facebook’s decision to shut down this page is its alone to make. As a platform, it relies on feedback from its users to help improve the platform, and that is precisely what is happening with the development of community standards that Britain First violated. There is no breach of free speech rights here. Facebook is not the government, but a private corporation, and it is not in any way the dominant means of communicating political ideas.

“Calls for Facebook to be regulated like a public utility blur the lines between private and public so much that those calls actually represent the true threat to the First Amendment. Conservatives who are calling for government control of private publishing platforms should be ashamed of themselves.”

Murray studies the intersection of public policy and the platform economy with a focus on preventing government regulation from hindering progress and innovation.

Despite the popularity of March Madness, most sports betting remains illegal in the United States. But in anticipation of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, states that hope to legalize sports betting should start making plans to tax and regulate sensibly, a new Competitive Enterprise Institute report urges.

“State lawmakers should support a legal betting market that makes compliance easy, keeps taxes low, and ensures consumer safeguards,” said Michelle Minton, CEI senior fellow and author of the report, Legalizing Sports Betting in the United States: A Playbook for State Liberalization and Regulation. “The last thing lawmakers should want is to let the black market offer better odds and more interesting products for consumers.”

For legalization to work, the report identifies essential components of a successful plan: the need for adequate availability of gambling licenses, reasonable tax rates, diverse product offerings, robust consumer protections, and easy means for consumers and businesses to cooperate and share information with regulators.

The report also warns against pitfalls of legalization, such as writing into law a new government-guaranteed revenue stream for sports leagues or giving the leagues control over what sports may take bets.

Every March, millions of Americans join friends, relatives, and coworkers in “March Madness” betting pools, centered on the National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Men’s Basketball Tournament. But for the past 25 years, that’s been illegal under federal law. As early as this spring, the Supreme Court could strike down that law as a result of a lawsuit brought by the state of New Jersey.

“In terms of the climate debate, I would say this is very good news,” Ebell told Politico Pro. “Pompeo has been very skeptical of the international negotiations that led to Paris, so I’d say we’re in a stronger position today than with Tillerson there.”

The Obama Administration’s proposal to mandate a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication system in all new cars is reportedly on life support at the more deregulatory Trump Department of Transportation (DOT). A V2V signaling mandate has been criticized as outdated, costly, and lengthy; it could take 20 years or more to become fully effective.

Speakers will provide updates on this debate, including the trajectory of auto safety technologies and why extending the adjacent unlicensed spectrum band into 5.9 GHz is key to creating the “wider pipe” required for gigabit Wi-Fi networks.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a D.C.-based free-market think tank that focuses on the administrative state, tallied up the number of regulations in Trump's first year in office and found "the lowest count since records began being kept in the mid-1970s." CEI's Clyde Wayne Crews told Reason, "I haven't seen personally anything like the regulatory reductions that have taken place."

...

But Crews warns that a midterm will be much harder for Trump to navigate than the comparative honeymoon of 2017. "I think in 2018, he's going to have a much tougher time meeting the goal," Crews said. "When you're acting alone as president and you can't make law on your own, the barrier that you run into is you run out of low-hanging fruit."

On Tuesday, March 6, the U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously to pass a bill to reauthorize the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), an agency with expansive authority that’s been running on autopilot in many ways since Congress last reauthorized it in 1990.

The legislation, now in the Senate’s hands, comes at a pivotal time for telecommunications, with lawmakers sharply divided over whether federal bureaucrats should play a central role in deciding the Internet’s future. Hopefully, Congress recognizes that the FCC’s costly regulations hinder not only Internet businesses and their competitors, but limit consumers’ access to information and drive up prices.

Under the leadership of Chairman Ajit Pai, the FCC has worked hard over the past year to undo obsolete regulations, modernize its internal processes, and reverse its disastrous decision in 2015 to subject Internet service providers to public utility regulation. But the agency itself can do only so much to promote economic freedom due to constraints placed on it by federal law. Only congressional action can serious restructure the FCC as it currently exists, moving some of its functions elsewhere in the federal government while eliminating other duties entirely. Lawmakers have plenty of work to do, as the bill passed by the House on March 6 leaves the FCC’s structure and processes largely unchanged.

Created when Congress passed the Communications Act of 1934, the FCC wields broad powers to regulate broadcasters, telecommunications services, and wireless providers. Recently, the FCC even claimed to have the power to regulate Internet access. Yet the economic and technological realities that purportedly justified the creation of this agency 83 years ago no longer hold true. Information scarcity has given way to information abundance, and Americans today do not depend on a tiny handful of companies to communicate with one another and learn about the world around them. To truly liberalize America’s media and communications markets, Congress must step in and rewrite the Communications Act to bring the FCC into the 21st century.

Despite recent progress, the FCC continues to regulate many sectors as if it were 1996 — or, in some cases, 1934. For example, even as Internet outlets have brought fierce competition to local radio and television broadcasters, federal media ownership laws limit how many local broadcasters a single person or company can own in a single city. These laws purport to promote a diversity of voices; in fact, these rules do far more to reduce the number of viable media outlets in communities across the nation.

Similarly, when it comes to television, the FCC’s current regulatory regime can be traced in large part to a 1992 law, the Cable Television Consumer Protection and Competition Act. Remarkably, the most recent effort in Congress to address the FCC’s treatment of television companies involves the emergence of satellite carriers, which were already well established by 2000. Yet instead of seeking to relax legacy rules in light of cord-cutting, with consumers dropping cable TV subscriptions in favor of Internet video platforms like Netflix and Hulu, the FCC under the Obama administration pondered imposing new rules on cable set-top boxes and subjecting some Internet video services to rules designed for cable companies.

The FCC also possesses considerable control over the airwaves, which are used by every American who owns a cell phone, Wi-Fi hotspot, or a plain old radio. Because of FCC rules, many of the most valuable airwaves cannot be licensed by wireless providers. The resulting scarcity of spectrum means that consumers pay higher prices for inferior mobile broadband service than they would in a more competitive market environment.

By reviewing these regulatory pitfalls the FCC has created and removing some of the sweeping authority granted to the agency years ago, our government can better serve us as taxpayers and consumers as we move toward a world with less regulated internet, television, and airwaves.

Today, Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Jessica Melugin joined U.S. Senators Steve Daines (R-Mont.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at a press conference to urge members of Congress against including an Internet sales tax in the upcoming omnibus spending bill.

Jessica Melugin, CEI’s associate director of the Center for Technology & Innovation, argues that members of Congress should listen to the people they represent and the small business owners affected, rather than the lobbyists trying to attach this harmful tax to the omnibus bill:

“Expanding sales taxes to online purchases may help state and local politicians, but it would result in a de facto tax hike on consumers. The compliance costs alone from an Internet sales tax would put small online retailers at a huge disadvantage against big box stores, and may even put some out of business, which means higher prices and fewer options for Americans who buy things online. It’s a perfect example of ‘taxation without representation’ because it allows politicians to tax sellers who have no physical presence in their city or state, and therefore, no say in the matter.”